


A Figure At The Edge Of The Woods

by somegunemojis



Category: Naruto
Genre: Trans Hatake Kakashi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:00:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26288401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somegunemojis/pseuds/somegunemojis
Summary: Not all of your ancestors and animal companions are friendly.
Kudos: 18





	A Figure At The Edge Of The Woods

Every time it thunders, Kakashi lifts his head. It’s been a long, hot summer, oppressive and dry, driving people a little mad. He’d spent the past two weeks in the hospital, half out of his mind and sweating, the sedation never quite deep enough and the painkillers never quite strong enough to kill the howling in the back of his head as it threatens rain for weeks.

When the storm starts to truly brew on the horizon, he slips from the window without checking himself out and takes the rooftops all the way home in bare feet and flimsy hospital pants, settles into his empty flat and sits at his window for days, watching the sky. The clouds gather for days, dark grey gradually turning black and blocking out the sun. Heat-lightning cracks like a whip and paints the sky red, orange, starting fires in the tinder-box forests that smolder for days. The air takes on a haze, the heat, the smoke, the angry buzzing of over a thousand heat-soaked human-hornets outside his window. A fight breaks out below him once, takes a whole ANBU squad to intervene and separate the two troublemakers. Kakashi doesn’t so much as twitch, a bone-lazy dog in the oppressiveness of the afternoon.

The storm finally breaks on the fifth day. 

The rain is black at first as it catches the low-hanging smoke and ash, leaving everything it touches tinted grey in the initial torrential downpour. Kakashi slips into his uniform, his sandals, takes flight from his slick window and hops roofs again. Every flash of lightning has his body lighting up, the rumbles of thunder have him pausing to listen – for echoes, for whispers. He lands in front of his father’s grave, the grass already soaked through and sloshing mud at him by the time he makes it there, and he thinks about kicking it up. Thinks about ripping up all the grass in the carefully manicured cemetery, uprooting the heavy headstones with every bone-rattling clap of thunder, slashing out the names of the dead. 

Instead he stands perfectly still, and when he looks up at the next flash of lightning, there is a wolf in the trees. Its shape is hard to see through the sheets of rain, so he walks closer. Her fur is matted with ash, all her ribs and her hip bones visible. She snarls at him as he approaches, eyes glittering and flashing golden in the dim light. Kakashi keeps walking, growls back at it – he’s the biggest bad there is around here, but there are children that wander to this graveyard alone. 

Her pointed ears flatten back against her skull, and then so does the rest of her, laying down on the soaking ground with a whimper. He kneels in front of her, they consider each other, and he watches the way she doesn’t move Quite Right, too graceful and ethereal by half, but he’s never had any sense about these things. He reaches out to touch her soft ears, makes contact. 

Just as lightning strikes again. 

She lunges, snaps her teeth down on his right arm and sinks them in deep, ripping up flesh and giving him a solid shake. The thunder rolls next, right on top of them, and with it comes the white-hot pain. Electricity crackles between them, a feedback loop, and he can’t tell where his screaming begins and her howling ends, which one thrashes where, if they’re even separate creatures at all anymore. The rain keeps cascading down, his blood pools beneath them, and when he takes a swipe at her with a kunai all he comes away with is another body numbing shock and blue-white ichor. She shakes him violently, rips apart the flesh on his arm and grinds into the bone, and – his vision whites out. 

He wakes again in his bathtub, cold water pouring down from the shower head. He can’t tell if the blood coating him or the pain currently lighting up the nerves of his striking hand is real, or if it’s just another half-remembered dream.


End file.
